Library, IT facilities, seminar rooms for independent group work, and presentation facilities.

Bowie, N E (ed) The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics, Blackwells, 2002
Cohen, Elliot D (ed) Philosophical Issues in Journalism, OUP, 1992
Frey, R G & Wellman, C (eds) A Companion to Applied Ethics, Blackwell 2003
Kieran, M (ed) Media Ethics, Routledge, 1998
LaFollette, H (ed) Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Blackwells 2nd ed., 2002
LaFollette, H The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics, OUP, 2003
Rachels, J The Elements of Moral Philosophy, McGraw Hill, 3rd ed., 1998
Singer, P (ed) A Companion to Ethics, Blackwells, 1993
Sorrell, T & Hendry, J Business Ethics, Butterworth, 1994

The module will run as a 2 hours per week workshop, employing a variety of learning strategies. In the first part of the module a lecture and seminar format will be used to introduce key themes and initiate inquiry. In the second part students will be engaged in a research project investigating and critically analysing material identified by each student, and will be responsible under tutorial guidance for determining work schedules and contracts which will include self-guided study, group meetings and supervisions. In the principal part of the module students will prepare and present a report for a general audience. Finally they will be asked to offer a self-evaluation of the quality of their work and the process they employed to arrive at it.

Ethical decision making is an integral part of our lives, both personally and professionally. Our actions are subject to a set of codes and beliefs which guide how we live, act and treat others. Increasingly organisations and professions are drawing attention to the ethical dimension of human action by highlighting their commitment to ethical principles and practices, and are expecting employees to abide by them and work in the light of them. This is occurring in fields as diverse as business and commerce, education, engineering, journalism, law, medicine and the caring professions, the sciences, and many others. We expect that each cultural, political and social practice can withstand ethical scrutiny.

This module will investigate such 'ethics in practice'. It is not a module in conventional ethical and moral theory, but rather requires students to investigate actual ethical practices in the real world. In the first part of the module students will consider the interface between ethical theory and practice by focussing on a small range of case studies of ethics in practice. The case studies will be selected from issues such as, for example, the ethics of medical research, the tension between the respect for individual privacy and the public right to know in investigative journalism, and academic codes of ethics in order to illustrate and critically investigate the diversity of real life scenarios in which ethical and philosophical ideas have relevance and implications.

In the second part of the module students will isolate a particular case study for individual research, will develop it within a series of workshops with the aim of presenting a formal report on the ethics of the practice including a set of conclusions about how issues involved in that practice should be thought and recommendations about how that practice and the codes implicit in it should be revised or future possible legislation.

Implicit in the learning and teaching programme of the module are two distinctive features. First, it will seek to develop in students the skills required for a more extended research project in the Dissertation at Level 3. Second, it will seek to engage students in ethical and philosophical issues involved in the real world and subsequent employment.

1. Formulation of research proposal in Week 6 (500 words) [Outcomes 1, 2, 3]
2. Written report together with a self-evaluation of the report and its presentation (2200 words) [Outcomes 1, 2, 3, 5, 6]
3. Oral presentation of report (300 words) [Outcome 4]